So far it's a quiet day for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.68%). As of 12:50 p.m. EDT the index is up 26 points, or 0.2%, to 13,128. More third-quarter results and a few downgrades are the cause for some moves today. Of the 30 Dow components, 15 are currently in the red. Three of today's losers are AT&T (T 1.04%), Dupont (DD), and IBM (IBM 0.51%)
So why are they down?
AT&T is sliding lower today after the company announced earnings. The company beat analyst expectations for earnings per share and raised free-cash-flow estimates by $2 billion. But compared to competitor Verizon (VZ 3.04%), AT&T fell short. Verizon added 1.5 million new wireless subscribers in the third quarter, while AT&T only added 151,000. Verizon also had a wireless-service churn of 0.91%, while AT&T experienced its lowest-ever third-quarter churn at 1.08%. AT&T was beaten on a number of other metrics by Verizon this quarter, and the stock is trading lower by 0.27%, while Verizon is up 0.95%.
DuPont is having another down day. After yesterday, when the stock lost more than 9% of its value, shares are only down 0.76% today. This morning, analysts at JPMorgan downgraded the stock from "overweight" to "neutral." After the company's third-quarter earnings proved a sore disappointment, the company is likely to see a number of downgrades in the coming days and weeks.
Finally, IBM is trading lower today by 0.2%. The slide comes after data storage equipment company EMC (EMC) announced earnings this morning and missed on both revenue and earnings per share. EMC increased revenue by 6% to $5.28 billion, but analysts were looking for $5.46 billion. The company also cut its 2012 profit forecast. The reason this announcement affects IBM is that the company also operates and sells software for the storage, servicing, and security of business data. If one big player is faltering based on low demand, the other players in that space usually will, too.
